Nearly two decades have passed since the never-published Balen Report on the BBC’s anti-Israel bias was compiled, and this is simply unacceptable. We must insist it is released to the public, and soon.

Since 2004, the corporation has spent more than £350,000 of taxpayers’ money on legal fees preventing the publication of the report written by its then-senior editorial consultant Malcolm Balen.

It has also resisted numerous Freedom of Information Act requests for the 20,000-word document to be released and defended its stance in courtrooms and tribunals, successfully arguing that information relating to its journalism was exempt under the legislation.

What’s more, Balen, now 66 and recently retired from the BBC, where he ended his career as Head of Editorial Standards, remains in step with the Beeb on its refusal to release the report to the public.

In a letter to the JC published in November he said that the corporation had “defended its right to keep the report to itself not because it would scare the horses but to protect the principle that it should be allowed the space to reflect privately upon its journalism.”

And he added that freedom of the press, which he said he hoped this paper would agree is vital to our democracy — we do, yes — “must be tempered by accountability, which is why the BBC has an independent regulator, Ofcom.”

But as he surely knows, Ofcom was not given regulatory powers over the BBC until 2017 — 13 years after Mr Balen wrote his report. Until then, complaints about the BBC were investigated by the in-house BBC Trust. Hmm.

And of course in December, the BBC learned that it would face a parliamentary probe over its coverage of Jews and Israel, following a JC petition calling for an inquiry that attracted over 10,000 signatures. The cross-party panel which includes a former BBC governor will formally present its findings to the BBC this year.

So we don’t know what’s in Balen’s report, but we do know about the concerns that led to its writing. We know that information that explained Israel’s actions in this most bitter of conflicts was regularly excluded from the BBC’s news reports.

You know, civilian buildings being used to launch rockets at the Jewish state, a willingness to treat Palestinian press releases as objective fact and headlining reports of Israel’s response to attacks as a “raids”.

At times, these manipulations and inversions were blamed on time constraints but there always seemed to be time for heart-rending accounts of injuries and fatalities. Somehow.

And then there was the serious allegation of the broadcaster’s anti-Israel reporters and correspondents. Libel laws prevent me from naming them, but I can report that as the report was being pored over at Broadcasting House, several senior journalists were quietly moved to new roles.

Was Mr Balen asked to examine a seeming willingness on the BBC’s part to accede to demands from the Palestinian PR machine to film gritty social deprivation in the territories, rather than the smart apartment blocks, cafes and shopping malls that are also there?

The combined effect of all this was, and remains, to camouflage the threat posed to Israel by its enemies and to undermine its need to defend itself.

To be straight, I think the BBC has contributed to the demonisation of Israel, has encouraged casual political antisemitism: anti-Zionism. And because of the broadcaster’s reputation and reach, you could argue it has also contributed to worldwide antisemitism.

If the report was published maybe the BBC could be forced to atone for its anti-Israel bias by commissioning a documentary. A hard-hitting programme examining contemporary antisemitism alongside the narrative of Palestinian victimhood and Israeli aggression, perhaps.

Nineteen years is a long time for Mr Balen’s former employers to keep his document secret, to “reflect privately upon its journalism.” It is time for our national broadcaster to be open.